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… Yes, I’m okay. I’ll see you down to the street.’
    â€˜I’m sure that you’re right about Mason having mefollowed,’ she said, hip-waggling in front of me into the hallway. I had stuck a poster of Aleister Crowley on the wall, and she peered at it in disapproval.
    â€˜Is that man any relation of yours?’
    I shook my head. She peered back at me, and said, ‘I didn’t think so. He has such piggy little eyes. He should eat less dairy produce.’
    â€˜He’s dead,’ I told her.
    â€˜Well, there you are, then. Proves my point.’
    I opened the door for her and she clattered down the stairs on her stilettos. ‘I’m a little worried about Vance, to tell you the truth. He’s definitely put on weight around the jowls. I don’t like jowly men. They remind me of those slobbery dogs, you know the ones who leave saliva all over your velvet skirts.’
    The stairs down to the street were gloomy and tilted and smelled of stale cooking-fat and Lysol. I’d been trying to persuade Mr Giotto the landlord to give the walls a lick of white paint. At the moment they were done in pustule yellow, which wasn’t very uplifting for my clients.
    â€˜Did you give me my mystic motto?’ Mrs John F. Lavender asked me, pausing on the second landing.
    â€˜Oh … no, sorry. I forgot.’
    â€˜I do like to have my mystic motto. It always makes me feel that I have some control over my life, do you know what I mean?’
    â€˜Yes, quite. Well … your mystic motto for this week is, unh, “Many a fish should be filleted before the sun rises.”’ Mrs John F. Lavender stared at me wide-eyed. I’d been giving my clients mystic mottoes for years — almost all of them insisted on it — but there was always a tense moment when I thought that they might burst out laughing.
    â€˜â€œMany a fish should be filleted before the sun rises,”’ Mrs John F. Lavender whispered, reverently. ‘That’s beautiful. I can almost imagine it.’
    We carried on downstairs, her heels clacking loudly with every step. I had almost forgotten that there was somebody waiting for me. Mrs John F. Lavender said, ‘I don’t know why life is always so goddamned
complex
. Hiding, lying, worrying if you’ve left your earrings somewhere you shouldn’t. And the trouble is that I absolutely adore
all
of them.’
    The sun was shining brightly through the grimy wired-glass panels in the building’s front doors, and reflecting from the pale-green linoleum floor. The figure was silhouetted black against the reflected light, so that as I came down the last flight of stairs it was impossible for me to make out who it was.
    I could see it was a woman, with a shoulder-length bob. I could see that she was very slim, and that she was wearing a simple strapless cotton dress with a red poppy print on it.
    But it was only when I came right up to her, and she turned slightly towards the light, that at last I recognized her; and even then I could hardly believe it.
    â€˜Hallo, Harry,’ she said, with the faintest of smiles. ‘Very long time no see.’
    â€˜Many a fish should be filleted …,’ Mrs John F. Lavender muttered. I opened the front doors for her, and she stepped out into the street. A fire-truck roared past, honking and whooping, and a huge guy walked by with the largest ghetto-blaster on his shoulder that I had ever seen. The hot morning air literally throbbed. Mrs John F. Lavender blew me two ostentatious kisses and said, ‘You’re a wonderful, wonderful man! I’ll see you next week, same time!’ Then — to my visitor — ‘He’s a
wonderful
man, dear! I can recommend him!’
    I closed the doors and the hallway was abruptly quiet. Karen was still smiling in that faint, fey way she had. She was nearly twenty years older than the last time I had seen her, and there were